What if 40K had good guys?

[bloodhound23]

I think the term is basically unusable in the context of 30k/40k. Sure, it refers ocassionally actions that are undertaken by people in otherwise horrible circumstances, making the best out of tragedies inside tragedies.

 

But to me it's crucial to understand the setting as a place where "being good" is basically an existential threat to your own survival, whether that's individually or collectively. That's the tragedy and horror of the setting. A banal good deed can only ever be situated in a world where everyone has to be a monster (or indifferent to wholesale monstrosity) to even have gotten here at all, and certainly has to be to continue to survive.

 

Humanity is not good, the Emperor is doing what he presumably thinks he needs to do for it to survive. His motives are wholly inscrutable to mortals.

 

It's Schmittian ultrapolitik all the way down.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Tawnis said:

That's a good point, but I'm not sure it's entirely correct. You can be clever with writing rather than trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. 

The trouble that your bring up is more-less a symptom of the larger issue, there isn't really anywhere left in the milky way to put a faction large enough to be able to fight on scale. The Votaan were the closest we've gotten and that's because they've been hiding out in the galactic core where no one else wants to go. 

You could have a "good guy" faction, or rather, a lighter gray faction, because it's always going to happen during wartime, it just need to have the right setup and foundation, which there isn't really space for at the moment. What I think they could do if they really wanted to go this route and have it address all the issues of space, tech, ect, would be to have some kind of extra-galactic race show up, perhaps as an enemy of the Tyranids, drawn to the Milky Way with the initial goal of rallying the galaxy against the Hive Fleets. Upon arrival, they find what a show the Milky way is an no one anywhere wants anything to do with them at worst, and tires to kill them more often than not. How long would being the "good guys" work for them, how much would they be willing to compromise and bend for their goal of stopping the Tyrandis? Or would it eventually break them and they just become another grim-dark part of the Milky Way?  

 

I think the Farsight Enclaves are the closest we have in 40k, and it's not like they haven't had to make difficult calls to survive. 

 

Okay, even if that were the case (I haven't finished all the HH books yet so I'm not familiar with that scene.) and we consider Big E as an exception because he was functionally created artificially, Perpetuals have been around for at least 30,000 years in Humanity alone at the point of the Great Crusade, and they are still so rare that even in 40k, there are incredibly few of them. How long did he expect this evolution of humanity to take? Also (and maybe this was something else I'm missing from a book I didn't read) why were they cracking down on psykers if they were supposed to be the future? 

He told Malcador that he planned to step down eventually and return humanity to the people, which he seemed to be trying to do as the Great Crusade drew to an end, but Malcador already had it figured out, the system they build could not sustain itself without him. 

 

That's also putting aside the whole, wipe out every other sentient race in the galaxy which is a hell of a means to try and justify to meet that end. Factions like the Interex proved that peace was possible with some species, later on the Tau prove this too. The Great Crusade was not the only way. 
 

 

Not against some, you can't make peace with Orks or Slaugh, or races like that, but as I said, the Interex (and later the Tau) proved it was possible in some cases. It was just a harder road to travel. It didn't give his regime a united thing to hate to drive his crusade on. 

I never made it far into the HH series but I can answer the question about psykers.

 

because of the chaos gods. Once the galaxy is rid of religions that either directly or indirectly worship them, they will essentially disappear. Once they’re gone there’s no demons, etc. once the chaos is gone from the warp, utilizing the warp is safer for psykers. Training can be more like driving a car ie how to do it safely and responsibly rather than focusing time on how keep demons from crawling out of your nostrils.

[Tawnis]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

I never made it far into the HH series but I can answer the question about psykers.

 

because of the chaos gods. Once the galaxy is rid of religions that either directly or indirectly worship them, they will essentially disappear. Once they’re gone there’s no demons, etc. once the chaos is gone from the warp, utilizing the warp is safer for psykers. Training can be more like driving a car ie how to do it safely and responsibly rather than focusing time on how keep demons from crawling out of your nostrils.

That's an interesting way to look at that. Hmm... 

[Marshal Rohr]

40K does have good guys, all the guys that I personally find cool and heroic. The bad guys are all the factions that other people play, and I do not like. For example, Ulthwé Eldar are good guys, but Saim Hann Eldar are bad guys. Imperial Fists are good guys, but Space Wolves are bad guys. 

[Robbienw]

Strange thread.  
 

40K has plenty of good guys.

[Focslain]

8 minutes ago, Robbienw said:

Strange thread.  
 

40K has plenty of good guys.

So which faction do you see as good and why? 

 

Yes there are good people, but there isn't a good faction, all of them are grey at best.

[Karhedron]

5 hours ago, Tawnis said:

Okay, even if that were the case (I haven't finished all the HH books yet so I'm not familiar with that scene.) and we consider Big E as an exception because he was functionally created artificially, Perpetuals have been around for at least 30,000 years in Humanity alone at the point of the Great Crusade, and they are still so rare that even in 40k, there are incredibly few of them. How long did he expect this evolution of humanity to take?

 

I don't think the Emperor was artificially created. One character claims this in Master of Mankind but she is repeating a rumour and is trying to annoy Valdor. Other scenes from elsewhere in the series (including a flashback to the Emperor's childhood) suggest he was born naturally.

 

As for how long humanity's evolution would take, we have no idea. Various HH novels give his justifications for why the GC and human domination of the galaxy were necessary. Whether you agree with them or not is really a moot point. A key facet of the 40K universe is that the Imperium is a pretty horrible place to live but nicer or kinder organisation would not survive the horrors of the setting.

[Robbienw]

1 hour ago, Focslain said:

So which faction do you see as good and why? 

 

Yes there are good people, but there isn't a good faction, all of them are grey at best.

The Imperium.  Is it not obvious why?

[Schurge]

16 hours ago, Lexington said:

Define “good.”

 

Its a fair question, and I might contradict myself by outlining what I view as good. AND, the ideal is generally not how we gauge what is good in this kind of context.

 

Who were the good guys in WW2?

 

Both sides committed atrocities abroad and at home - and I am not just talking about Russia on the allied side. Both sides had some level of justification.  Neither side fit my view of "good" at the faction level. And we know which side was the "good" side, and in the same breath, only the ignorant believe the bad side was composed of intrinsically evil people. War is never as clear cut as we might like it to be. Part of me wants to say war makes monsters of everybody, but that implies that wars happen in isolation and that our crimes against our fellow humans began and end when countries start shooting at each other.

 

The 40k setting may have originally been intended to be satire of the politics of the 80s. And while it may have cranked the nastiness of humanities institutions up to 12, it went out of its way to justify its supposed criticism. Orks, Tyrranids, and Necrons justify xenophobia. Chaos and Genestealer cults justify oppression at home. A forever war against existential threats justifies the military industrial complex. And when you place the magnifying glass on the Imperium, you will find more good in the hearts and deeds of men and women than you will in chaos worshippers, demons, Orks, and tyrranids.

 

40k is messy. Just like real life. Separated from us by degree, not by spirit. Its a mirror.

 

That said, my definition of good faction would be living in harmony with the Way as outlined by the Tao Te Ching, while acknowledging that Taoism doesn't hold a monopoly on good, I just choose it because it doesn't have as much baggage in the West as other frameworks I could provide. It also holds complexity. "Treating others how you wish to be treated," isn't inherently good, though it is a decent rule of thumb.

 

And I say that, and by that definition few institutions - if any - and no governments live up to that standard. (E.g. factions.) and I don't run around thinking there are no good guys in real life.

Edited July 30 by Schurge

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

8 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

I don't think the Emperor was artificially created. One character claims this in Master of Mankind but she is repeating a rumour and is trying to annoy Valdor. Other scenes from elsewhere in the series (including a flashback to the Emperor's childhood) suggest he was born naturally.

 

As for how long humanity's evolution would take, we have no idea. Various HH novels give his justifications for why the GC and human domination of the galaxy were necessary. Whether you agree with them or not is really a moot point. A key facet of the 40K universe is that the Imperium is a pretty horrible place to live but nicer or kinder organisation would not survive the horrors of the setting.

Shamans created the emperor by doing a ritual and sacrificing themselves or something…that doesn’t sound natural to me.

[Karhedron]

4 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Shamans created the emperor by doing a ritual and sacrificing themselves or something…that doesn’t sound natural to me.

 

The was the original lore from about 35 years ago but nothing like it is in the HH novels. The Emperor is simply the most powerful of the Perpetuals.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

The was the original lore from about 35 years ago but nothing like it is in the HH novels. The Emperor is simply the most powerful of the Perpetuals.

Has it been retconned yet?

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Has it been retconned yet?

 

No, but I think any lore predating the HH series is questionable, at best. Remember that GW's approach is that everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true.

[Tawnis]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

The was the original lore from about 35 years ago but nothing like it is in the HH novels. The Emperor is simply the most powerful of the Perpetuals.

That doesn't make it non-cannon though as nothing has overwritten it. Right now, both The Shamans creating him and him being the strongest perpetual are both correct. 

19 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

No, but I think any lore predating the HH series is questionable, at best. Remember that GW's approach is that everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true.

 

Yes, but until there is a reason to think a specific thing is no longer cannon (usually by it being obviously replaced with something else) picking and choosing what past lore we think is cannon might as well be Fanfiction. 

[Karhedron]

7 hours ago, Tawnis said:

That doesn't make it non-cannon though as nothing has overwritten it. Right now, both The Shamans creating him and him being the strongest perpetual are both correct. 

 

Previously the Emperor was unique and the Lore explained his creation. Now there are others like him. He is simply the first among many and their origin is evolutionary.

 

I am not saying the shaman synergy has been hard-retconned but we now have an explanation for the Emperor's existence that does not require it.

 

I am normally a fan of older lore so I loved the little nod to the Starchild in TEATD. But my personal feeling is that the Shaman synergy has been retconned by omission. I respect if you feel differently. 

[Evil Eye]

7 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Remember that GW's approach is that everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true.

To be fair, by this very same logic there's no point worrying about whether something has been retconned or not; after all, if everything is canon but nothing is true, everyone is free to pick and choose their preferred "true" canon. Which to be honest I prefer anyway; the ambiguity and room for creativity are what makes 40K an interesting setting.

 

Re: good guys, my take is that whilst there are no completely good factions, there are definitely factions that are less good than others, and it is these factions that effectively stop anyone from being able to be even close to "nice".

 

The Imperium is as a whole a corrupt, inefficient and totalitarian nightmare state, and if it was any other way it would collapse due to the influence of literal incarnations of evil. The Inquisition has to occasionally Exterminatus a seemingly peaceful planet full of innocents so that a hundred more such worlds are spared. Children have to be abducted, vivisected, rebuilt and brainwashed into Space Marines so that the Imperium can be protected by heroes capable of facing down the horrors that would have every last human soul a plaything for the whims of mad gods. The people must worship the weeping corpse atop a golden throne as the god he never wanted to be, so that they have the faith and purity of purpose to denounce the lies of the enemy beyond. The Imperium itself is not good, but the people within it are, and if the Imperium tried to be "good" it would not survive. Meanwhile, the alternative is servitude to gods of bloodshed, treachery, decay and hedonism, invariably leading to self-destruction and atrocities beyond words. However bad the Imperium is, the Ruinous Powers are so, so much worse.

 

The Craftworld Eldar aren't actively malevolent but are interested in their own preservation first and foremost, and due to being almost extinct cannot afford to do otherwise; a whole Imperial world being sacrificed to save a handful of Eldar is objectively justified from the perspective of keeping the Eldar race alive. The Dark Eldar, of course, are the twisted descendents of the Eldar responsible for their race's fall in the first place and are about as far from "good" as humanly possible- they literally feed on suffering, have no qualms about this fact and are essentially as close to ontologically evil as a race with free will can be.

 

The Tau genuinely seek to prove the Imperium wrong, that it is possible to have a more functional, free society...and they're destined to fail. They are a speck compared to the other great forces of the galaxy, and are only spared complete obliteration by the fact that no force feels the need to commit the amount of resources necessary to wipe them out.

 

The Leagues of Votann are arrogant in the extreme in spite of their own declining numbers, see other races as means to an end and entrust their race's future to gradually decaying abominable intelligences.

 

The other factions, meanwhile, are:

>Soulless automatons, all that remain of an ancient empire tricked into a Faustian bargain with star-eating eldritch gods, hell-bent on the destruction of anything that trespasses onto the shattered remnants of their domains (Necrons)
>Ambulatory fungus that literally feeds on violence and has no desire to be anything else (Orks)

>An extra-galactic, numberless horde of xenosaurian locusts, where every single organism in its trillions of trillions of creatures is nothing more than a puppet operated by a terrible alien intelligence so vast that the Warp itself goes still in its presence, yet utterly single-minded in its focus on consuming every last iota of organic matter until all that remains of the galaxy is barren, sterile rock (Tyranids)

 

So yeah. There's no clear-cut good guys, but there are definitely clear-cut bad guys.

 

Or, to quote the setting itself? There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

[Marshal Rohr]

I think the main issue with talking about this is real fans understand there are no good guys in 40K, there’s things to like about every faction, and things to find nobility in despite the cruel reality of the setting. 
 

The other people talking about this are just projecting personal politics of either side onto it and stinking up the party for the real fans. 

Edited July 31 by Marshal Rohr

[Tawnis]

49 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

I am normally a fan of older lore so I loved the little nod to the Starchild in TEATD. But my personal feeling is that the Shaman synergy has been retconned by omission. I respect if you feel differently. 

Fair enough, it is hard in some more obscure bits of lore to specifically retcon something organically in a story. 

[Robbienw]

35 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

I think the main issue with talking about this is real fans understand there are no good guys in 40K, there’s things to like about every faction, and things to find nobility in despite the cruel reality of the setting. 
 

The other people talking about this are just projecting personal politics of either side onto it and stinking up the party for the real fans. 

“You are a not a real fan of 40k unless you agree with my personal opinion that there are no good guys in 40K”

 

Relax mate 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

To be fair, by this very same logic there's no point worrying about whether something has been retconned or not; after all, if everything is canon but nothing is true, everyone is free to pick and choose their preferred "true" canon. Which to be honest I prefer anyway; the ambiguity and room for creativity are what makes 40K an interesting setting.

 

Re: good guys, my take is that whilst there are no completely good factions, there are definitely factions that are less good than others, and it is these factions that effectively stop anyone from being able to be even close to "nice".

 

The Imperium is as a whole a corrupt, inefficient and totalitarian nightmare state, and if it was any other way it would collapse due to the influence of literal incarnations of evil. The Inquisition has to occasionally Exterminatus a seemingly peaceful planet full of innocents so that a hundred more such worlds are spared. Children have to be abducted, vivisected, rebuilt and brainwashed into Space Marines so that the Imperium can be protected by heroes capable of facing down the horrors that would have every last human soul a plaything for the whims of mad gods. The people must worship the weeping corpse atop a golden throne as the god he never wanted to be, so that they have the faith and purity of purpose to denounce the lies of the enemy beyond. The Imperium itself is not good, but the people within it are, and if the Imperium tried to be "good" it would not survive. Meanwhile, the alternative is servitude to gods of bloodshed, treachery, decay and hedonism, invariably leading to self-destruction and atrocities beyond words. However bad the Imperium is, the Ruinous Powers are so, so much worse.

 

The Craftworld Eldar aren't actively malevolent but are interested in their own preservation first and foremost, and due to being almost extinct cannot afford to do otherwise; a whole Imperial world being sacrificed to save a handful of Eldar is objectively justified from the perspective of keeping the Eldar race alive. The Dark Eldar, of course, are the twisted descendents of the Eldar responsible for their race's fall in the first place and are about as far from "good" as humanly possible- they literally feed on suffering, have no qualms about this fact and are essentially as close to ontologically evil as a race with free will can be.

 

The Tau genuinely seek to prove the Imperium wrong, that it is possible to have a more functional, free society...and they're destined to fail. They are a speck compared to the other great forces of the galaxy, and are only spared complete obliteration by the fact that no force feels the need to commit the amount of resources necessary to wipe them out.

 

The Leagues of Votann are arrogant in the extreme in spite of their own declining numbers, see other races as means to an end and entrust their race's future to gradually decaying abominable intelligences.

 

The other factions, meanwhile, are:

>Soulless automatons, all that remain of an ancient empire tricked into a Faustian bargain with star-eating eldritch gods, hell-bent on the destruction of anything that trespasses onto the shattered remnants of their domains (Necrons)
>Ambulatory fungus that literally feeds on violence and has no desire to be anything else (Orks)

>An extra-galactic, numberless horde of xenosaurian locusts, where every single organism in its trillions of trillions of creatures is nothing more than a puppet operated by a terrible alien intelligence so vast that the Warp itself goes still in its presence, yet utterly single-minded in its focus on consuming every last iota of organic matter until all that remains of the galaxy is barren, sterile rock (Tyranids)

 

So yeah. There's no clear-cut good guys, but there are definitely clear-cut bad guys.

 

Or, to quote the setting itself? There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

Everything is canon but nothing is true is absolutely stupid

 

canon is what is true. Whether it’s true propaganda in universe, or it’s just a flat out fact in universe.

[gideon stargreave]

There are no good factions. They are simply too big to even apply the word to. There are however good people (and other species) and good actions. 

[sairence]

6 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Everything is canon but nothing is true is absolutely stupid

 

canon is what is true. Whether it’s true propaganda in universe, or it’s just a flat out fact in universe.

I believe the actual phrase GW uses us

 

"Everything is canon, not all of it is true."

 

Which is really just the short hand for "it's a big setting and your stories are part of it."

 

It also means that every piece of lore we find out has the caveat of the unreliable narrator, meaning it is conveyed from the narrator's point of view, with their biases, their lack of information. The narrators telling us a story that they believe to be true, but whether it actually is, or they get the details right is a whole different matter.

 

So yeah, we have the Shaman lore, we have the star child lore, we have the perpetuals lore, etc etc. And they are likely all true...as far as the narrators of those stories were concerned. That makes them canon. Whether they actually are true, well....that's always been and always will be up for debate.

[siegfriedfr]

Compared to almost every faction in the Galaxy, Space marines are as close to good guys as it gets.

 

They are the protagonists and defend mankind against all kind of threats.

 

The empire administration is still a nutty theocracy, but space marines largely operate outside of this madness, and Roboute distanced himself from it.

 

Tbh when i read the «everyone bad» mantra to describe 40k, it feels more like dellusion and clinging to the pre-2017 lore situation. 

 

If you define bad by the standards of chaos tyranids orks dark eldar, then everyone else looks more neutral and simply defending their own agenda. 

[gideon stargreave]

“It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable.“

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, siegfriedfr said:

Compared to almost every faction in the Galaxy, Space marines are as close to good guys as it gets.

 

They are the protagonists and defend mankind against all kind of threats.

 

The empire administration is still a nutty theocracy, but space marines largely operate outside of this madness, and Roboute distanced himself from it.

 

Tbh when i read the «everyone bad» mantra to describe 40k, it feels more like dellusion and clinging to the pre-2017 lore situation. 

 

If you define bad by the standards of chaos tyranids orks dark eldar, then everyone else looks more neutral and simply defending their own agenda. 

You mean back when the lore was good and we had things like Orpheus and Badab lol